Indian Industrial Heritage

The narrative of Indian industrialisation is unique in many ways; a country that is industrialising and de-industrialising simultaneously; that is struggling in the discovery of its own identity within the myriad political, ethnic, social and economic discourses. So what does industrial heritage mean to us in the Indian context?

We recognise that the industrial timeline of India is different from the global timeline and we have set to collaboratively co-create a map of tangible and intangible heritage of India. This mapping has been built on the research framework developed by Aishwarya Tipnis as part of her PhD in Urban Design at the School of Planning and Architecture New Delhi between 2016-2021. The theoretical understanding has been developed over the years from 2003 through various collaborative and consultancy projects, research and undertaken by Aishwarya Tipnis Architects and is still ongoing. We are very grateful to our seniors and mentors in the industry who have helped us in investigating and understanding aspects of Indian industrialisation in great detail.

Tangible Industrial Heritage as

  • urban and rural landscapes of extraction and production 
  • buildings that were built to house these processes of industrial systems of production as well as social activities such as housing, religious worship, or education; 
  • engineering and transport infrastructure such as bridges, aqueducts, railway lines; 
  • machinery 
  • corporate and company records and archives; 
  • products produced through the industrial process.

Intangible Industrial Heritage as

  • memories and oral histories as well as identities of people who worked in the industry; 
  • systems and ways of working as well as organizing labour; 
  • technical know-how and skills that worked the machinery 
  • systems of management and written documentation
  • evolution of the way of life, as an aesthetic

Explore some of our work related to Indian Industrial Heritage here:

The research presented here has been co-created by the following people:

Aishwarya Tipnis | Hinna Devi Singh | Mrinalini Singh | Sridevi Maithily Venugopal | Muskan Choudhary | Ashruti Singh| Preethi Matthews | Aamir Latief Wani | Priyanka Gayen | Ritika Jharia | Udit Sarkar | Subhranil Kar | Parima Sharma | Kanak Verma | Rachit Gore | Edeeksha Shekhawat | Lakshmi R | Peony Sengupta | Sangavi R | Yatharth Gupta | Mannmeet Singh | Jaya Khurana | Ananya Asthana | Krittika Mohan | Abantika Mukherjee | Samragee Paul | Alankrita Nandy | Abhishek Sonar | Aashi Jain | Sunil Kraleti | Sharon Nair | Nitin Giri | Spoorthy Myneni | Vaibhav Jain | Ashim Chakravarty | Sovan Saha | Advait Sambhare | Vikas Yadav | Tejas Javery | Prachi Metawala | Shruti Rajgopal | Gunali Ajgaonkar | Kshitij Bahl | Puneet Bansal | Madhumita Srivatsan | Vaswati Bhattacharyya | Kajal Jain | T. Krishnapriya | Renu Daranga | Rajatesh Maji | Swati Goel | Sanyam Gulati | Shobhit Agarwal | Prakhar Tandon | Vibhav Kharagpuria | Anuja Mayadeo | Ubair Ahmed Buch | Sharaddha Arora | Zoya Khan | Parshati Dutta | Neha Parulekar | Apoorva Shenvi | Harvarshan Jatakar

DYNAMIC MAP OF INDIAN INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE